All of science had seemed like magic once, before years of painstaking study had revealed the secret rules that governed atoms, motion, and the void between.

Where one foot has tread, others will follow. It is foolishness to think it can be stopped. The whole world will be laid bare eventually, all its secrets dragged out of their hiding places and set down on your maps.

On the horizon, the dark line of the mountains was almost invisible, lost in the haze of late afternoon. Somewhere in their midst lay the goal of her map, the possible location of a stunning archaeological discovery. However far away those peaks might look today, they were there, and that meant they could be reached, one way or another.

If she were a man, no one would think twice about her decision to undertake such a venture. It was just another way the world tried to keep her sex at home, docile and bored to insanity. To hell with all of them, she thought boldly.

He remembered the flames and the silence and in a moment of wisdom understood what the power he contemplated was in truth: a great mouth, hungry and merciless, that would devour the world if it could. Because no cause stood in absolute justice, and every victory came with a price paid in blood.